The Best Marinated Herring I’ve Ever Tasted
Posted By Randy on February 4, 2010
I grew up in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia in a time when most families made their own versions of every day food staples that we now simply go to the supermarket to buy. One of those was the pickled herring delicacy locally referred to as “Solomon Gundy”.
Making Solomon Gundy requires herring that has been cleaned and with the tails and heads removed, and a marinade consisting generally of onions, vinegar, sugar, salt, and whatever amalgam of herbs and spices the maker considers appropriate. Some people poach the herring first while others marinate it raw leaving it to “cook” in the acidic bath. Some pickle entire fillets while others pre-cut the herring into bite sized pieces, and for some leaving the skin on is the only way to go while others skin the fish.
I was once very intimate with the process. When I was 15 years old I got a summer job with what used to be called National Sea Products just outside Lunenburg, standing for eight hours at a stretch, in a shed built on a concrete wharf protruding into Lunenburg harbour, skinning pickled herring fillets and packing them in a neat, radial pattern in large wooden barrels. The smell of marinade permeated my hands to the point where I think I can still smell it after all these years, and I had the indescribable joy of working cheek by jowl with a pair of skeletal twins whose intellectual capacity made the banjo playing kid in Deliverance look like a Nobel Prize winner but without the musical gift. I remember that they were annoying in that manner peculiar to people who combine idiocy with a complete inability to shut up, but I was on a mission to pay for flying lessons, and so I skun my herring with added passion, all the while fantasizing about two narrow, empty spaces in the production line, and a couple of herring barrels being rolled out the door that weighed a little heavier than all the rest.
But I digress. Growing up I had opportunity to taste Solomon Gundy on many occasions, and always enjoyed it. Even though I would never decline the fruits of the sweeter recipes so many locals seem to prefer, as I got older my tastes veered more toward the tart varieties often referred to now as more representative of European tastes. With no disrespect to those who prefer to eat, or produce, marinated herring in the sweeter style, for my own part I can state with absolute conviction that my own tastes are served to perfection by the herring produced by Mersey Point Fish Products, located near Liverpool, Nova Scotia.
According to the company website, Mersey Point Fish Products was started in 1981 by Cornelis and Anne Mutsaers shortly after they immigrated from the Netherands to Canada with their three sons. Since then, what was a cottage industry has grown to produce marinated and salt herring as well as a variety of tasty smoked fish made with herring, haddock, mackerel, trout, and salmon from its 6000 square foot processing plant now operated by Mutsaers son Robert and his wife Pamela.
It must have been shortly after Cornelis and Anne started marketing their exquisite herring “rollmops” and “tidbits” in the early 1980’s that I discovered marinated heaven wearing the label of “Mutsaers Fish”. A frustration was that I could only find the product in a couple of widely separated locations, one being the Bridgewater Sobey’s store, but it wasn’t a standard product for Sobey’s. The manager of the Sobey’s seafood department informed me at the time that she stocked it to serve requests from the store’s European customers, but that the store itself didn’t acquire the product as a standard item. This made availability spotty at best.
Now, I am happy to announce that Mersey Point Fish Products herring is once again on the shelves of a store near me, and if you’re lucky, you. The Bridgewater Sobey’s seafood department once again stocks two varieties; the “Rollmops” (shown at left in a photo from the Mersey Point Fish Products website) which are herring fillets rolled around a wonderfully tart gherkin all held together by a short wooden skewer, and the “Solomon Gundy” (pictured below right from the same source) which is herring cut into bite sized pieces, and currently my absolute favourite. Both share the same addictively tasty marinade with the rollmops served up with skin on while the ‘Gundy comes naked.
Thanks go out to the Bridgewater Sobey’s seafood department for making these exquisite offerings available once again to fish loving foodies. I’d serve this to the Queen if she ever forgives me and comes back for another visit, except no matter how much I buy it’s always gone before the guests arrive.
Mersey Point Fish Products! Highly recommended by the Large Fierce Mammal and his Mate!
[…] is a follow-up to my article titled The Best Marinated Herring I’ve Ever Tasted that was posted here back on 4 February 2010. In case you missed it, herring lovers will be pleased […]
Really sounds tasty…..wonder if those are in stores here in the USA?
I don’t believe Mersey Point Sea Foods distributes outside Maritime Canada, but any marinated herring made in the European style will fill the bill – less sweet, more tart. The “Feature” brand sold by Costo is a close approximation.